Owners of small pets commonly provide indoor litter boxes to receive and hold animal excrement for later disposal. These litter boxes are most frequently used for cats, but are suitable for any domestic animal which, by natural inclination or training, is amenable to the discipline of voiding in a designated area. A container of suitable size made of plastic, metal or cardboard, and having a surrounding side-wall, is kept in a chosen location suited to the household. It is filled to a depth of 2" or "3" with a cellulose or absorbant clay material, or with a commercial litter material which includes a deodorizing agent. The side-wall should be high enough to keep the litter in the container during any pawing and scratching that goes with its use.
The litter material is rearranged periodically and those faces which can be picked up with a small scoop are removed for disposal. After a few days, perhaps a week, the litter material becomes saturated, or its deodorizing agent becomes ineffective, so that it must be disposed of and replaced with fresh material. This duty is probably the most distasteful part of pet care for an owner. Moreover, there are known health hazards such as toxoplasmosis, in handling of such wastes, most particularly for pregnant women. A reusable litter box adds to these onerous duties, since it too must be periodically cleaned. Newspaper is frequently used as a lining material, and to also serve as a protective floor cover under and around the litter box. When the same location is used for years, as is often the case, damage caused by leakage underlines the need for more positive protective covering.
Small pets, and especially cats, are wonderful traveling companions except for the awkard logistics of the litter box. Also, the overt indelicacy of greeting one's host with a lovely pet on one arm and a litter box under the other is discomfitting at best.
Thus, there is a long recognized need for a fully sanitary, disposable and transportable litter box for pets. It follows logically that such a litter box is potentially popular and profitable if proper cost and distribution dynamics are in place. To achieve good sales volume, this sort of product must be inexpensive and packaged for market distribution. U.S. Pat. No. 3,626,900 discloses a flexible sheet with a peripherial drawstring. This sheet is laid on a flat surface to receive excrement, and the drawstring then facilitates its sanitary disposal, but the use of any litter material, or a means for its confinement are not disclosed. Some of the desired features are also disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,913,091, wherein an assembly of parts provides a relatively inexpensive and light weight litter box. The vital aspect of commercial packaging for sales and distribution is not contemplated, even in this recent effort.
A first object of the invention is therefor, to provide an economical, disposable alternative, thereby eliminating the unpleasant maintenance of a reusable litter box. Another object is to provide an impermeable protective cover for the floor under and around this disposable litter box as well as a sanitary enclosure for the disposal of the waste. A further object is to make this litter box in a compact, flat packageable form for both commercial distribution and use while traveling, without any sacrifice of functional strength or rigidity.
The availability of an inexpensive device meeting these objectives can alter the present usage pattern by making it practical to use only a shallow layer of litter material and dispose of it each day or two.
The present invention provides a litter box having rigid side-walls wherein the component parts fold into a compact form suitable for commercial packaging. A flexible sheet, which may have a peripheral drawstring, serves as an impermeable membranous seal and also as the disposal means. An arrangement of folding portions open to form the side-walls when erected. When unfolded in a rectangularly arranged, upright shape in the absence of an integral bottom panel, the side-walls are stiffened by folded stiffeners which lie flat against the supporting surface, and may extend either into or away from the interior of the rectangle.
The flexible sheet, which may be in either flat or bag form, is fitted as a liner into the interior of the rectangle, and is drawn down around the exterior of the side-walls. If desired, an unsealed bottom reinforcing panel may be included under this impermeable membraneous sheet to maintain the rectangular shape, and a side support outer wall may be fitted over the erect side-walls to provide additional rigidity and to help hold the flexible sheet in place.